36 weeks

This week has been good. My mom came home last week. She's doing well. She has bad days, which worries me a lot, but then she has really good days. She has lots of staples. She can't get dressed and she still hasn't left the house, which is good. I hope that she gets better soon. I feel badly that she had to go through major surgery and is now having a sort of tough time recovering.

Last Friday the students I work with went on break. I had to be to work at 5:30am. I spent the first three hours sitting my office...I got caught up on some paper work. I finally got bored and I really wanted to help get the students on the buses or walk through the dorms and check luggage but that didn't happen. I walked from my office down to the dorms where the buses were loading and I got there just in time to see the last of the students load on the buses. I was able to get a ride back to the office and shortly after we were able to eat at the pot luck. After eating I went to my doctors appointment.

This appointment was a turning point! It was my 36 week appointment. One of my last appointments. My doctor was great. She said that at this point if I started going into labor they would not do anything to stop the labor that the baby would be developed enough and could survive on her own. That was the best news. I was kind of disappointed I wasn't dilated or anything....that was kind of disappointing. But I did find that I could walk, walking was ok now that I was past the 36 week mark. It was a pretty good appointment. I also booked my last four appointments. Wahoo! Almost there!

Saturday Phil and I took it easy. Late in the afternoon we decided to re-organize the garage. I was the supervisor. Phil did most of the work. I did help by sweeping out the entire garage, and the driveway. Phil moved and organized all the stuff in the garage. He did a wonderful wonderful job. The garage looks fantastic! We got rid of some stuff. We organized. We can actually walk through our garage now. We had a pretty good day. Phil and I had an awesome dinner that night. Phil cooked a wonderful meal of grilled chicken which he chopped up and we made tacos and rice and we had green beans and pears.

It has been hard to sleep. My hips hurt almost every night/morning. It feels like I sleep with a weight placed on my hips. And I wake up every two hours to go to the bathroom. Its hard to sleep....but I feel like I'm doing pretty well. I can't wait to have Ava. I can't wait to meet her but mostly I don't feel like I'm a very good at being pregnant.

35 weeks

She's almost here!

It seems like this has been the longest and shortest pregnancy ever! I can't believe my baby girl will be here in just a few weeks! I know that our lives will never been the same again. The first couple of months will be feeding, changing, and learning how to sleep on a newborns schedule. I'm so excited to meet our little one. Part of me wishes that this event would happen really soon and the other part is enjoying the last little bit of non-baby time with my husband, which I know will be far and few between when Ava arrives.

This has been a pretty good week. I've had contractions...but since I have a new criteria for going to the doctor, I wasn't too worried about it. I've been reading forms and other blogs online and if you have false labor they send you home, if you aren't dilated enough, they send you home. So I'm waiting until I know for sure, I'm guessing, even though I've never done this before, that I'll know when that will be. I've made it this far, so after my doctors appointment tomorrow, I'll start having appointments every week until little Ava decides on her arrival.

On Thursday last week, the new mall/shopping center opened up. My good friend Cheryl and I went to the opening night. Most of the stores aren't open yet, but the few that were open were nice. They have Gap, Banana Republic, Tommy Hil, Van, Sketchers, Off Sak's 5th, Jones New York, Osh'kosh, Gymboree, Carters, Adidas, and some other stores. The decorations are AMAZING! They did a fabulous job! There are fountains everywhere. They have different theme's of Nevada, especially the Truckee River. They also have about 6 outdoor fireplaces. Its incredible. Its pretty neat.

On Friday night we went out to dinner. It took us a little while to figure out where we were going but I really wanted a pretzel roll pastrami sandwich so we went to a place called Brew Brothers in the El Dorado Casino. We had a good evening. We had a pretty decent weekend other than that. I took a few naps because it has been so hard to sleep through the contractions (Braxton Hicks) at night.

My mom is still in the hospital in Sacramento. She's doing really well for having major surgery (fixing three things in one shot). I think its hard for her to be so far away from home and from sitting in the hospital bed, but I know that it helps to have my dad there with her. My dad takes her out for walks around the garden at the hospital. I wish I was able to go and see her, but I'm not supposed to travel although I would if she needed me right away! She sounds great on the phone. I call her once or twice a day. I am hoping that she will be home by early next week sometime. She is hoping for the middle of this week. She had a small set back, so she'll need a little more time to recover, but she really is doing well. She even says that she feels much better now than she has for a long time. I'm excited to see her, but I want her to get well first!

34 weeks in review

My Great Uncle Bruce passed away this week. He was a wonderful person, full of heart and humor. He will be missed very much by everyone who knows him.

On another note, Phil and I took a drive last weekend. We thought it would be fun to drive out to Pyramid Lake (about 30 miles north of our home) and take a few pictures. When we got there, Phil decided we should try and drive to the OTHER side of the lake. So we followed the road, but there was only a dirt road to get to the other side of the road and we had my car, not the best off roading vehicle. So we thought we'd see what was out just a bit further on the road. And a bit further...and a bit further than that. Phil was absolutely sure that the highway we were on would either lead back to I-80 over by Lovelock (which is about 70 miles east of Sparks, where we live) or it would come out just south of Susanville California (about 130 miles North West of our house). So we kept on driving just sure we would end up in one of those places. We saw signs for some towns up ahead so we kept going thinking they would have a small diner or something along the way. Well the towns were so small we didn't realize we went through a town until we were well past i! We drove for miles! We came to the Black Rock Desert, where they hold the Burning Man event each year. It was very white and dusty and there is absolutely nothing there!!! Our entire drive up until this point was looking at the high desert and mountains. There were some storm clouds and the clouds were low covering the tips of the mountains and we even passed through a few heavy rain spots.

When we drove past the Black Rock, the landscape began to change. The dirt turned into this beautiful red color. It looked a lot like clay. The trees changed and the small shrubs became more prevalent. Again we drove for miles. As we drove I realized that we were going more north west and that we were probably going in the direction of Susanville. I finally found a map in the car and found the road that we were on. Not only were we going Northwest I found out that the road we came out on was only 48 miles from the Oregon boarder!!!

We finally got to a town called Cedarville. It was very small. We decided to head back. Being 8 months pregnant and sitting in the car for about 4 hours already was pretty tiring. We went through and stopped at the Cedarville National Park. We stopped to take a few pictures (since that was the entire idea behind going to Pyramid Lake) and continued on our way over to Alturas and then eventually to Susanville to eat. When we got to Susanville we were 139 miles north of Reno. It was a very very long day and a very long drive.

We got home around 6pm.

About an hour later my Dad called to tell us that my mom went to the ER room. I asked we should go down there but they said they had it handled. About an hour after that my Dad called again but he told me that my mom was waiting for care flight to take her over to Kaiser in Sacramento. So we rushed down to the hospital (luckily the hospital is only about 3 miles from our house and from my parents house). My mom didn't look too bad when I got there. She was on all kinds of medication. They finally figured out what has been going on with her for months. Phil and I were kind of mad they couldn't help her at the local hospital and that they were sending her back to the place that messed her up in the first place.

So Phil and I were able to visit with her for a little while before she was taken off for her flight. She ended up having surgery in the wee hours of the morning and when I spoke with my dad on Monday he said that she was sleeping but her recovery was going so much better than the surgery she had 2 years ago (almost exactly). They took our her gallbladder, fixed her hernia and fixed the air that she had going in her colon and removed the tissue that was attaching itself to other organs.

I talk to her everyday now and she sounds great! She might be able to come home early next week sometime.

Its been a very emotional week.

34 weeks

Week 34!

We are that much closer to meeting our baby girl! Only a few more weeks to go! I'm getting ready for her arrival. Everything is almost ready. Everything is put away or sorted. Our house is clean for the most part. I'm getting the cats shaved on Tuesday to try and cut back on the amount of hair around the house since it has been warmer and the cats are hot and shedding their hair.

This week has been pretty good so far. I took Friday off work. I figured since all my sick and vacation time will be used up when I take my maternity leave, I'd use one day to spend with Phil and running around taking care of stuff around town. It was so nice to have an extra day off. It was really nice. I had an appointment in the morning with my doctor, everything looks good. I've gained 28 pounds, my stomach is getting bigger, which means that Ava is growing and they say she's doing well and everything is fine. I've had some contractions this week, but they didn't last longer than a couple of hours and nothing else happened so I didn't go to the hospital. My doctor said everything was fine.

After my appointment I spent some time with my parents, we had breakfast and then ran around town. In the afternoon Phil and I went to Tahoe to pick up his pay check. We went to lunch and ate on the patio overlooking Lake Tahoe. We were able to walk out on one of the beaches and take some pictures. It was nice.

Today we had breakfast with my parents, then Billie (my sister in law) came over and we spent about 6 hours cooking. When Billie was pregnant with my nephew Luka she got a crazy hair and decided to cook like a mad woman and freeze it so that she would have something to eat after she brought my nephew Luka home from the hospital. I thought that was such a great idea that I asked her to help me cook a few meals so that I had something to eat when Ava comes home from the hospital. I'm not exactly an excellent cook. I get side tracked, and I don't always follow the directions. And I do better if someone shows me how to do things. We went shopping for the ingredients, and then we started cooking. We cooked three different things. We cooked home made mac and cheese (which is better than anything that comes out of a box!!!), fajitas (just the meat and veggies), and steak curry. It took a long long time. My sister in law did awesome! She was amazing!

I'm looking forward to the rest of the week.

33 weeks

33 weeks! This week has been pretty good. We've had rain almost everyday this week, accompanied by lightning and thunderstorms usually in the late afternoon or evening. The weather has still been warm in the 70's.

I've been feeling pretty good. I can tell I'm in the last stages of pregnancy. Although I don't feel completely huge (even though people at work were asking how many days over due I was..which was a little irritating), I have reverted back to first trimester mood swings and food aversions or at least smell aversions. I can't stand the smell of coffee again, smoking is totally repulsive (not that it was ever a fabulous smell in the first place), certain types of food don't smell right, students with bad hygiene really smell awful. Also little things irritate me, and they shouldn't, but they do, one example is cat hair. I love my cats, well I used to love my cats. But finding even one cat hair on something irritates me. I wash EVERYTHING (yes, I'm slightly obsessive compulsive, but it wasn't this bad before).

I've been working hard at work. Last week we finally got approval to run a different system for attendance and I got caught up on 2 months worth of filing. Attendance has been sooo much better lately. It went from 3 full pages of students (about 36 students per page) down to about a page and a quarter. It went back up a little this week, but thats sort of expected because the students get to go on break in two weeks. I do a lot at my job. I'm so happy to be employed. It has been awesome, my boss keeps telling me how much she'll miss me. She's not really the kind of person to say that to ANYONE. I feel lucky to be in the job that I'm in and to have the boss that I do and to work with such great people!

This week I also got glasses and new contacts! This is the first time I've gotten new glasses since leaving San Diego almost 6 years ago. Its so nice to see! My mom and I hung out all Sunday afternoon. We went out to lunch and then we went to babies r us to pick up just a few more small things for baby Ava like nail clippers, nail files, thermometers and a squeeze ball thing for her nose if she gets plugged up.

I'm getting really excited and I'm ready for her to come! My guess is around July 12th. The students go on break June 26th and come back July 13th. I'm guessing I'll have Ava right around the time that the students come back from break. Which would actually work out perfectly! Usually when the students go on break, we get half days, except for the three days of training. We each take turns with our half days either coming in early or late. And we just spend time auditing, and working on correcting our files or entering papers that we didn't get a chance to enter while the students were in class. We have a really big assessment coming up in August with the Department of Labor. This sort of determines if we sign another contract. I'm sure it will go well.

32 weeks

Well I'm 32 weeks and counting! I'm excited that I've made it this far!

I had a doctors appointment on Friday last week. Everything looks good. The contractions are not as bad, in fact most days I don't have any (that I know of)!

This week Ava is averaging about 4lbs. She is about 16-17 inches long. Her finger nails and toe nails are almost grown in fully. She is passing urine, about a pint a day. She also gets hiccups. And I mean, boy does she get hiccups. She gets them on average twice a day, anywhere from 10 minutes to 32 minutes. I feel so badly that she gets them so often and so violently. The doctor said that hiccups are good, and its a good sign of her brain developing. So I'm glad that she's healthy.

After my next two doctors appointments I will begin going in every week. One lady at work was able to see/feel Ava's hiccups. She looked at my stomach and asked if Ava was kicking. When I told her that Ava wasn't kicking those were her hiccups, she couldn't believe it!

Although I'm pretty good about being caught up on my work, I've been making sure that I don't have much left to do so in case anything happens at any time. I've already started doing job descriptions of how to do the different tasks that I do everyday. I'm going to work on that a little more this week. There are several things I do at my job. I mostly deal with attendance. So every week I pull in students with a certain amount of absences each week. I ask students if they can get them cleared, I give them 24 hours to get their absences cleared and turned back into me. If they can't, they go on an attendance contract. I also deal with behavior issues. Usually minor issues like being intoxicated on center so I just hand over contracts for the students to go on. Then I also run a Peer Intervention Panel, so I schedule students who have minor behavior issues to attend the Panel after school two days a week. Those are the three major things I do.

I do feel bigger this week. I notice I waddle when I walk down the hallway at work. I go to the bathroom more frequently. Although I have energy I have been more tired. I also have been waking up every morning with achy hips. I've had that before but its been a bit more painful this time. I'm guessing that Ava will drop soon or maybe my body is just preparing itself for birth way ahead of time.

I had a great weekend. Saturday Phil, Brendan, my parents and I went to church together. That was a lot of fun. I'm glad we all went. Then on Sunday my mom and I spent a majority of the day together. We went shopping and we went out to lunch. I had a lot of fun!

This past week we've been getting thunderstorms and rain every afternoon. It has still been hot, which has been nice. Today was the first day that it cooled off in the afternoon.